Look At C# Interactive Window In VS 2015

It is a Read-Evaluate-Print-Loop (REPL) editor, where we can enter C# statements and execute immediately. It helps to learn APIs, play with C# features, check quick output without creating any console/test projects and experiment with other .NET technologies by providing you an immediate result. We can open it in VS 2015 from View -> Other Windows -> C# Interactive.

C# Interactive

After opening it, we can enter any C# statements. It has a full intellisense and tooltip support also.

support

Once we hit Enter, it will execute the code and return the result:

result

We can declare the methods and complex code with "for loops" and LINQ expressions, as well, as shown below:

code

We can include a namespace and it handles the errors (compile and run time) as well:

code
We can load an assembly (.dll or .exe) and call a method in it by using #r command, as shown below:

code

We can a select a piece of code in our project and execute in an interactive Window,  as shown below:

execute in interactive window

Output

Output
We can select a project in Solution Explorer and load into an Interactive Window, as shown below:

Interactive window

Loading a project in this way will load all other dependent assemblies as well:

Output

Output

We can execute C# script files (.CSX), using #load command:

command
command
C# script file is just a bench of C# statements with the first line in the file as an entry point (no need of Main method), which can be executed from any non-Visual Studio environment.

We can get the history of the commands entered, by using Alt + UpArrow and Alt + DownArrow.

We can use #help to get the complete list of the supported commands in C# Interactive Window:

C# Interactive window

I am ending the things here. I hope, this article will be helpful for all.


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